During the 18th century many countries throughout Europe went through a period that would forever change the way they thought about society, politics, philosophy, science, and even religion - such period was better known as the Enlightenment or Age of Reason. After the Thirty Year’s War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648, several German writers wrote frankly about the perishes of war, criticized the ideas of nationalism and warfare that led to such terrible times for the people. Among such authors were Hugo Grotius and John Comenius, who were of the first Enlightenment minds to go against tradition and propose better solutions.
Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. The Enlightenment produced numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals and respectively marked the peak of its influence and the beginning of its decline. The Enlightenment ultimately gave way to 19th century Romanticism (A+E Networks, 2009).
The Enlightenment era opened a path for independent thought, and the fields of mathematics, astronomy, physics,
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The general decline of the Church, the growth of secular humanism and political and economic liberalism, the belief in progress, and the development of science are among its fruits. Its political thought developed by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Voltaire (1694-1778) and Rousseau (1712-1788) created the modern world. It helped create the intellectual framework not only for the American Revolutionary War and liberalism, democracy and capitalism but also the French Revolution, racism, nationalism, secularism, fascism, and communism (New World Encyclopedia contributors,